Upon completion of drilling an oil well, fluids from the oil well may be under sufficient innate or natural pressure to allow the oil well to produce on its own. Therefore, crude oil in such wells can rise to the well surface without any assistance. But, even though an oil well can initially produce on its own, natural pressure generally declines as the well ages. In many oil wells, therefore, fluids are artificially lifted to the surface with downhole or subsurface pumps. Sucker rod pump systems are commonly used systems to transport these fluids from downhole oil-bearing zones to the well surface to be collected, refined, and used for various applications.
Typical sucker rod pump systems have a plunger that reciprocates inside a barrel while attached at the end of a string of sucker rods. Reciprocation of the sucker rod string in deviated wells within the sucker rod pump system often leads to uneven frictional wear on the surface of sucker rod pump components such as the sucker rod, tubing, guide, and coupling. Uneven wear of the components leads to costly maintenance and repairs. To counteract this, rod rotators are used to at least partially homogenize frictional wear of the sucker rod pump system components by more evenly distributing frictional wear by slowly rotating the sucker rod or string of sucker rods within the tubing. However, even though rod rotators may prolong the life of sucker rod pump system components, contemporary rod rotators eventually fail to rotate in deviated wells that have high torsional drag due to the excessive contact of the rod string and the tubing and such failures lead to oil well production interruptions.